I’m quite proud of my rural upbringing in a country store in Bryant, Alabama. We had only one school, one restaurant, and no traffic lights. We used to grow cotton, then flowers, and of course potatoes. I mean taters.
The late country comedian Minnie Pearl spent some time near my neck of the woods. When I heard Minnie say “She looks like she’s been rid hard and put up wet,” I knew where that came from.
(Speaking of Minnie, she referred to her brother as “Brother,” like a lot of us did. “When Brother tells you howdy, he’s told you everything he knows!”)
I knew some old-timers whose primary occupation was “piddlin.” They would piddle in the morning, and piddle in the evening. They never seemed to get anything done, which I later learned is the very definition of piddlin’. I have since become an expert piddler myself.
I never knew anyone named John Brown or Sam Hill, but I sure heard about them. Anyone who would express amazement would shout, “Well I’ll be John Brown!” I never heard what the real John Brown thought about that.
And if I ever meet Sam Hill, I would have to ask him why in the Sam Hill everybody used his name.
Cussing with real cuss words wasn’t as popular as it is now, so I heard a lot of words that were the sanitized version. Shoot-far! Dad-blame it! Well, I dee-clare! What in tarnation is going on?
At home, we never had “lunch.” Lunch was served only at school. At home, that noontime meal was called dinner. When it got dark, it was time for supper.
Nowadays, we think a lot. Back then we reckoned. “Reckon he’ll be okay?” “Yeah, I reckon he will.”
If you got lost, there was no GPS. You had to ask for directions. Your destination was usually “over yonder a ways, just past the holler.”
Many of my family’s customers didn’t come to our store to shop. Instead they “traded” with us. Although they were trading cash for groceries, that term dates back to when they would trade eggs, chickens, or corn. In return, they might get some “surp” for their pancakes.
Speaking of food (which was kept in the ice box), about twice a year, we would enjoy “cracklin bread,” sprinkled with pork. Another breakfast treat was a plate full of cat-head biscuits. Just don’t eat too many of them, or you could get a bad case of what one of my teachers called “Dia-rear.” That actually made sense to me at the time.
I mentioned Sam Hill and John Brown. But there’s another famous name, reportedly the South’s biggest party boy. When you heard somebody was “drunker than Cooter Brown,” he was wasted. I later learned Cooter was a real person, who lived along the Mason-Dixon Line during the Civil War. He had family on both sides, but he figured if he stayed drunk, neither side would enlist him. It worked, and Cooter Brown became a drinking man’s hero.
And what about Chester Drawers? You know: “Where are my over-hauls?” The answer: “Look in them there Chester Drawers.”
One day a city slicker came into the store. It was obvious he was from above the Mason Dixon line. He looked at me and said, “Where’s your pop?” I said, “He’s back there in the kitchen with mommer’ an’ em.” Eventually I figured out the man wanted a Co-Cola.
One of our regular customers was full of clever sayings. No matter what we were talking about, he would chime in, “Well, like the feller says, don’t count yer chickens afore they hatch!” I always wondered who that “feller” was. Maybe it was Chester Drawers.
Many of our country families used to have a lots of kids. One day, the census taker was making the rounds. At one house, a man answered the door, and the census taker asked, “How many children do you have?” The man started rattling off their names, and kept on going for a while. The census taker interrupted him. “Sir, I don’t need names, just numbers.” The man paused and said, “Aw, we don’t use numbers. We ain’t run out of names yet.”
